Support for descriptors different from rockcraft.yaml

Metadata

Project: rockcraft
Number: #185
Type: issue
State: open
Author: arturo-seijas
Labels: —
Created: 2023-02-06 04:47 PM UTC
Updated: 2025-10-07 09:38 AM UTC
Closed: —

Current evaluation

Feature request to allow custom descriptor filenames beyond rockcraft.yaml for multi-rock repos. Maintainer declined on 2025-10-01 citing cross-craft-tool consistency; workaround via rocks-template suggested. Issue remains open, last activity 328 days ago.

Suggested action: close not a bug

Reason: Maintainer @tigarmo explicitly stated on 2025-10-01: 'There are no current plans to address this as we want to keep the behavior consistent among the craft tools (eg Snapcraft and Charmcraft),' confirming the rockcraft.yaml-only limitation is intentional by design. @cjdcordeiro also provided a concrete workaround (rocks-template) for the multi-rock use case, making the feature request moot.

Impact: 20 Quick Win: 11.0 Staleness: 55 Complexity: 45 Confidence: 80 Support Request: 25

Issue body

Hi! AFAIK the only valid name for the rockcraft descriptor is rockcraft.yaml. This is a limitation when more than one rock needs to be defined, forcing us to build the images in different subdirectories. We'd like to be able to use any file name that can be passed as an argument to `rockcraft` and be able to generate the resulting `.rock` named after it. Thank you

Evaluation history

Date	Model	Scores	Action	Summary
2026-09-01 02:00 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.8-27b	Impact: 20 Quick Win: 11.0 Staleness: 55 Complexity: 45 Confidence: 80 Support Request: 25	close not a bug	Feature request to allow custom descriptor filenames beyond rockcraft.yaml for multi-rock repos. Maintainer declined on 2025-10-01 citing cross-craft-tool consistency; workaround via rocks-template suggested. Issue remains open, last activity 328 days ago.
2026-07-22 12:13 PM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 80 Complexity: 15 Confidence: 85 Support Request: 10	close not a bug	Request to allow custom filenames for rockcraft descriptors instead of enforcing rockcraft.yaml. Maintainers declined implementation to maintain consistency with other craft tools, suggesting a repository template as a workaround.
2026-07-08 08:54 AM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 85 Complexity: 20 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 10	close not a bug	Request to allow custom filenames for the rockcraft descriptor instead of strictly rockcraft.yaml. Maintainers declined to implement this to maintain consistency with other craft tools, suggesting a repository template as a workaround.
2026-06-16 02:26 PM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 85 Complexity: 15 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 60	close not a bug	Request to allow custom filenames for rockcraft descriptors instead of only rockcraft.yaml. Declined to maintain consistency with other craft tools. No current plans to implement. A repository template workaround is suggested for multi-rock setups.

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